Thursday, December 15, 2016

I need to get up to go to school. It's not a low-stakes, missing out on attendance points sort of day. I have to be there, and I don't remember why, but something urgent is compelling me to get up.

I'm too exhausted to remember clearly or think too much. All that's important is getting up and moving. I can trust my body to automatically go where I need to be at this hour of the morning when I've woken up so unnaturally.

I'm sitting on the edge of my futon, and hoist my backpack on to my back. I start to stand up, but I tip backwards like a beetle back onto the bed. I scrunch my stomach muscles and try to sit upright, but I can't get up! I try to turn onto my side to use my legs to help me, but that doesn't work either! I'm just stuck.

My friend is at the edge of the bed watching me try to get up and waiting for me so he can drive us to school, but I can't!

It's starting to get embarrassing. I lie there and flail while I worry about how I haven't studied enough and am probably going to fail and none of the people I'm physically surrounded by at school are going to understand. Flashes of hunches about their reactions flash before my mind and I just keep struggling like a tipped box turtle.

INTERPRETATION

I do have a backpack which is so heavy I've developed little spurs at the edges of my collarbones. But there's only one final left! And I look forward to studying for that one. ^_^

What a difference having just one extra day to study makes in terms of leaving the class with a positive impression of the material and the field and the likelihood of good marks. Grades are that arbitrary. One day or an hour of extra sleep or a friend to help can be the difference between an "A" or a "C."

I had to cram three finals and a paper into two days after struggling to catch up with homework. I had to make a decision: study enough to get a good grade in one of two challenging classes and let the chips fall where they may on the other one. Or do mediocre in both classes.

I stopped being able to communicate with one instructor about half-way into the semester, whereas I was able to get into deeper and deeper and deeper conversations with the other one, so I picked that class to focus on. I paid for it on the test, but I can't say I have regrets about the choice. I wish I didn't have to feel as though I had to look at the situation in that manner, but that's how it goes. I was simply too tired to keep up the pace I started the semester with.

But one of the most interesting aspects of the dream was how the friend trying to help me up was not someone I recognized. He was Hispanic and about 30 years old. He doesn't remind me of anyone I know, but in the dream, I knew him intimately. I'm not sure what to think of vividly-invented friends in dreams. He had a solid personality and bodily presence to him.

I'm skipping along a series of ice flows in ice cold water with a friend. All the colors of the sunset behind us look tropical, replete with pink, purple and orange hues. Our clothing consists of Hawaiian shirts and cutoff shorts. Little blobs move under the water. On an impulse, I reach down and scoop them up. They're little belugas! Tiny, tiny beluga whales are swimming beneath us! I'm so enchanted until I realize that messing with beluga whales is illegal. I look up, hoping there aren't any ticketing drones flying overhead.

My friend scowls at me. "Let's get going!"

It's not like him to be so impatient. I don't seeing any drones, but I put the babies back into the water because it feels like the right thing to do, and I move on with my friend. We jump ice floes until we enter an igloo painted in fluorescent colors. A television attached to a human body is in the center of the room.

Lara Croft is on screen- naked and posing in the desert with a small pistol. She's covered in tattoos. Just above her cleanly-waxed privates is a smiley face with crossed out eyes- sticking its tongue out. The rest of her is covered in fine-line, gray scale portraiture of celebrities and her family. I wonder what they all mean and who they all are. I'm surprised that she has any tattoos. I don't remember that.

INTERPRETATION

This was an old dream, so I'm having a hard time remembering what was going on in my life at this point. But I do believe that every dream has significance.

It sounds as though I was really questioning my behavior. I'm accidentally doing things that are illegal, or wrong in the dream. There's a transparency in the dream, whether from the drones monitoring us or the nudity attached to a person. In addition to worry about doing the right thing on screens and in person, perhaps I'm questioning whether or not to get more tattoos. I got another one this year.

I had one that was pretty "bad ass" like Laura Croft, and I got one that was more fun and soft and feminine. One was of a type of phoenix (the mythical bird that rises out of the ashes) and the other was a flower that grows out of volcanic ash. There are a lot of emotions mixed into my tattoo journeys. Perhaps that's what the last part of the dream was addressing.